Pla-Toad
 

Need some ideas on how to break under a plateau.

Mrs. Zoxe and I started riding last July. Before Thanksgiving I had dropped 25 lbs from 285 to 260. The Holidaze did their usual damage but the weight came back off almost instantly in January, and I was back to 260. I have hovered in the low 260s since.

I have tried eating more, eating less, exercizing more, exercizing less, eating greater % of my intake as salad, and also a greater % as protein. I even switched from coffee to tea for a few weeks and nada. It’s almost June and I'm still where I was in January. Starting to get a little frustrated with it.

Ideas?

No great wisdom - but perhaps post your daily intake... Also do you do a minimum of 1 hour of total sweating say on th Trainer or Exercise bike per day (60 minutes of cardio should really help - and just riding may not be as intense).

Eat min 3-5 meals a day (5 if small) and a min of 64 oz of water (i f no coffee or diet coke or exercise - otherwise more water)

Also write down all food on fitday.com or some other calorie journal.

Is all this just plain stupid -as in Duh already doing that???


Me i have plateaued but my breakfast has really become bigger as have some meals so I am cutting back again too!

Nah, MissB, any suggestions are fine. :)

We ride 5-6 nights a week for 45min to 1:15 depending on wind and route. Since we're riding buddies some nights I'm really pushing and some nights I'm spinning at low mph if Mrs. Zoxe is riding slower. I should probably start riding with my heart rate monitor and see where that's at as I go.

I may be able to add some cardio in the morning before work but will need to reorder our morning routine.

Were it me I'd try cutting cardio to an hour or less 2-3 times per week and adding 2-3 instances of weight training. It's also possible that riding that much has you at a severe caloric deficit and your body has slowed your metabolism as much as it can.

Adding some muscle should help jump-start your metabolism.

Cut to 2000 calories or less a day or two. That sometimes helps.

Variety is the spice of life. Add variety to your routine. If you have access to a gym try a step aerobics class or something similar 1 or 2 times a week. If no gym then get some tapes - Pilates, kick boxing, step, lots of choices there.

A heartrate monitor is very usefuil for making sure you are getting in the aerobic training zone for the right amount of time.

The weight training idea is a great one too - anything to change up your training routine. Think waaay outside of the box and your body should respond.

MM

I hit this plateau as well and tried everything with the food. Less calories more calories less protein more protein... You get the idea.
I finally busted through when I put the heart rate monitor on and I am riding 3 days during the week and one long ride on the weekend. Mix in two weight training days and the rest day/45 mins. of stretching and I finally saw results again! Try mixing it all up and you will be suprised at your results I think. I also switched to 5 meals a day to keep the big hunger off and am getting plenty of calories to try to not lower my metabolism.

Just a few ideas that worked for me. Oh also on my weight training days I keep the HR monitor on to make sure that I don't dog it through that either. I do lots of reps and a minute between sets to keep the HR up.

I broke under 260 for the first time since October this weekend! I'm back up a little today, but that's typical for a Monday morning. At 261.8, I'm also ~5lb under where I was two Mondays ago.

Three things:
1. I did a calorie count and realized I was stuffing my face with wint-o-green life savers at work and had underestimated the several hundred calories it was adding each day.

2. The "salad" I was eating on our Sat or Sun lunch out was probably more than 2k calories despite being lots of leafy greens.

3. Mrs. Zoxe and I have been taking more nights off but riding harder when we go out. We added several mph to our top end and avg. I haven't bothered with the monitor yet but will add it soon.

+! on changing up the work out routine. It's a hard thing to do when you love riding your bike, but jump starting different muscle groups can help a lot.

With long days here, you may find that adding another 30-60 minutes of daily riding gets the pound-shedding going again. Keep your current speed up when you increase your distance, initially for the part of your ride that you're doing now, with the add-on mileage being more relaxed to start, then gradually increasing speed for that too.

If you have a tight after-work schedule that precludes extending your afternoon-evening rides, get up early and ride in the morning. (Some people find that AM workouts diminish morning appetite, a bonus effect, but YMMV.)

Or add the other forms of exercise suggested here, while maintaining your current riding regimen.

It's better to exercise 5-6 days a week than less, even if the less is more intense. :thumb:

+1 on FitDay or another calorie tracking tool. I was in much the same boat as you, basically in the dark about what was keeping me from losing weight. It sounds like you have discovered the source of some of your "hidden" calories, which is great. But a food journal will help you track your eating precisely with little difficulty or inconvenience, and in return, it will help you spotlight any nutritional challenges, such as overall calorie intake, macronutrient balance, etc. It's made world of difference for me; 305 to 245 and still going.

I had the same problem and started doing some other exercising. Working new groups of muscles and tried to target different areas better.
I do ALOT of leg work, but my upper body was suffering. When I started doing more upper body stuff, it seemed to help. Also, really watching the caloric intake cane help.

Someone said Fitday.com ... awesome site, there's several like it. Use them and be very tedious about logging. You might be surprised that the trail mix you eat "just a few handfuls of" is actually about 4 "servings" and you just took in 4x that number on the nutritional label (somewhere around 800 calories). These aren't just random numbers. This actually happened to me when I was snacking on Kirkland Trail mix (from Costco).